The present invention relates to provisioning telecommunication services and/or content. In the past, there has been no consistent interface between telecommunication service/content providers' networks and their customers' premises wiring. For instance, telephone service often has been hard-wired to the customer's premises wiring by a variety of methods, rendering service calls unnecessarily complicated and intrusive. Such services calls often required service personnel to enter the customer premises, creating logistical issues for the telecommunication service/content provider and increasing customer frustration. Moreover, the lack of any discrete interface between the customer's premises wiring and the provider's network sometimes forced the use of proprietary hardware from the customer's perspective and limited the provider's flexibility when considering options to upgrade or otherwise modify the network.
This problem has been exacerbated by increases in telecommunication services/content offerings available to customer premises. For instance, many telecommunication service/content providers (hereinafter, “service provider,” or “provider” will be understood to mean a provider of either telecommunication service, content, or both, and “telecommunication service” or “telecommunication offering” will be understood to mean either telecommunication service, content, or both) now provide xDSL service to their customers, but those skilled in the art will recognize that there is little (if any) standardization among providers. Thus, implementations vary widely, each requiring different hardware and software configurations to be operable, and customers have little flexibility in choosing hardware. For instance, ADSL service frequently is deployed differently than VDSL service, and ADSL deployments themselves can vary from provider to provider. Likewise, telephone wiring schemes can vary widely among customer premises, requiring different types of hardware to enable and enhance services, such as filters to control interference, and the like. Further, a typical customer premises has multiple wiring networks, including one for video distribution (cable, satellite, VDSL, and the like), one for data distribution (Ethernet or the like, perhaps with a connection to an xDSL modem or cable modem), and another for telephone service, and these networks generally operate independently of one another. And if a customer wants to add a new telecommunication service, an expensive service call (often including one or more new cable drops and/or the installation of new premises wiring) likely will be required.
Given the wide variety of telecommunication information and services available in the marketplace, it would be helpful if a single entity could allow multiple providers to initiate services to a customer premises, increasing both efficiency for the providers and ease-of-use for the customer. This proliferation of telecommunication services also has created a need for a more flexible interface between providers' networks and the customers' locations. Preferably, such an interface would be addressable and/or programmable, so that the interface could quickly and easily be updated to accommodate new services and/or technologies. Further still, it would be advantageous to provide a provisioning system that would allow multiple providers to provision the same customer premises equipment.
The present inventor provides systems and methods for addressing these and other problems.